Childhood Love: Marble Cake

This is such a strange kind of season. Spring is on the verge of take-off, with flowers budding and birds darting through the air. The first freckles start to appear on people's faces from the sun and everyone's smile seems so much time. However, there's still the flu that keeps me tied to my bed and also helps me reflect on the past 12 years. Why the last twelve years, you may ask? Well, the last day of school, only a week from writing final exams, feels like a kind of closure. Like being dropped from an airplane and free-falling for those first scary minutes until the parachute pops out. Like a starting point.

Growing up is such a quiet process, it sneaks up on you and pounces when you least expect it to. And then, suddenly, there's the moment when you're sitting in the classroom with the high school people you've known for two years and it hits you: this is the last time. I'm never going back to school again. It feels so strange, having dreamed and fretted about this moment for years. Now it's here and it's almost too much to cope with.

Of course, there's nostalgia. Especially when I see those little first-graders with their huge backpacks and their excited faces and know: they've still got those twelve years ahead of them. And where am I going now? This is the first time in life that there's no paved road ahead to keep walking on. There are some paths to choose from, some steep and some smooth, and some that don't look like paths at all. And some that are still to be made.

So this week, I decided to make a childhood cake as a reminder of all the good times, of all the birthday parties, of playing in the street until nightfall and of the smile this cake always brought to my face. Here comes my favourite cake growing up: Marble Cake.

I made this for my higher level course on the last day of school. This is the most succesful cake I've ever made for a crowd - some people had four slices! Maybe it's because of the simple deliciousness of the cake - but I'm guessing it was the memories associated with the combination of vanilla and chocolate and that delicious crust.

Here's the recipe:
250 g Butter
200g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
3 eggs
500g plain flour
1 packet baking powder (about 3 tsps.)
125 ml milk

For the dark chocolate third:
1 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. milk

Step 1: Combine the sugar, softened butter, eggs and vanilla in a bowl.

Step 2: In a second bowl, combine flour and baking powder. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Step 3: Mix the flour and baking powder into the creamed wet ingredients. Combine.

Step 4:
Now here's where you get to decide how much dark you want in your marble cake. I poured two thirds of the white dough into the cake tin, so there was 1/3 dark chocolate dough. Feel free to switch them around of do it half/half.

This is how you make the dark chocolate dough:
Add the ingredients for the dark chocolate dough (above) to your 1/3 or 2/3 of dough.
Now add this as a top layer in your cake tin.

Step 5:
Using a fork, swirl the dark and the white chocolate dough (be careful not to overmix, or the beautiful pattern will be lost) you can also make a "striped" cake by layering the black and white dough - be creative! You could also add chocolate chips or nuts to the dough!

Step 6: Flatten the dough's surface with a spoon and put it into the oven so the height's even.

The cake needs to bake for about an hour, but check it regularly (mine was done a little earlier, at about 50 minutes). It has the most beautiful crust and looked gorgeous on the inside, too. Let it cook completely before eating. If you let it rest for a night, it's even better in the morning.

Give this cake a slight dusting of icing sugar or some molten chocolate before serving - perfect for parties or last days of school ;) Happy spring everybody!

Love, x